5d ago

David Attenborough Voice

102 comments

Some of these men call other men "males" as well. I used to call both genders by such "technical" terminology because I did not think it was offensive until a woman complained in a forum I frequented like 15 years ago.
TBH I feel annoyed that I can't use those terms because I know some guys use the term to intentionally dehumanize specifically women and I am not that sort of guy. But also I really tend to embrace neutral/technical/clinical language a lot because of a general disdain for romantic thinking and language.
Things are not more than what they are.
- anything you call people will offend some people….
  i’m sure some chucklefyck doesn’t want to be called a “people”… actually “you people” is often offensive.
  it’s all about context, and being as respectful as is reasonable… for example, “retard” literally means “slow”… you could retard the growth of a plant. mentally retarded was just a term for having severe cognitive disabilities that made you unable to interact normally and made you need care to live… but through a history of people abusing those people, and of course using that as an insult made it offensive and dehumanizing.
  with calling people “females”, i think it’s because it’s extremely uncommon except for when people are dehumanizing women… so when someone innocently use the term they can be seen as likely oppressive… due to context.
  also, given the transphobia thing, and scientific/anthropology defining female as the biological sex and woman as the associated gender, one might think you’re slipping transphobia into regular conversation…
  and of course people like simple heuristics so “guys who call women ‘females’ are likely bad people”, works well enough….
- It's worth noting that the words 'male' and 'female' are adjectives, not nouns, so if you want to be technical then it's erroneous to use them thusly. That is, it is correct to say "I am male", but to say "I am a male" is grammatically erroneous.
  In common speech, people don't tend to describe other human beings with these two adjectives, i.e. most people would say "she is a woman" rather than "she is female" (note, not "she is a female" because 'female' is not a noun). However, we do commonly describe animals using these adjectives, and colloquially the noun is commonly dropped. E.g., "it's a female" is seen as a perfectly normal way to describe a horse when it's understood that the other party knows that you mean "it's a female horse". This is why it is considered offensive to refer to a woman as "a female": it implies that she is an object, less than human and more suitably treated as livestock.
  
  I only have two dictionaries, but both have male and female as both adjectives and nouns. In what dictionary are you seeing them only as adjectives?
  Even dictionary.com has “noun: a male person” and “noun: a female person”, which goes directly against both your grammar point and your livestock point.
  Hopefully you’re just a linguistic prescriptivist with a preferred dictionary that doesn’t match mine. Edit: removed a rude remark
  That said, as a descriptivist, I accept that those words (as nouns or otherwise) are changing to sometimes be derogatory, so I try not to use them to describe people, just to avoid my intentions being misunderstood.
  
  Just a thoughtless prescriptivist, repeating what I'd understood from previous such discussions, without having done my own due diligence. 🤷 I stand corrected.
  
  Glad my suspicion was wrong, sorry for the rude comment!
  
  But humans are an animal.
  
  The main difference is that humans see other animals as purchasable or otherwise controllable and generally only refer to their sex when forcing them to breed. Women don't like the comparison.
  
  I specifically remember the woman that complained that "female" was dehumanizing so that mostly tracks, but the issue with that perception is that people purchase male animals for breeding and people (men or women) who heard me using the same terminology never complained about the dehumanization of calling them males. I get that the social dynamics here are complicated of course. I suppose men typically are socialized to not care about being dehumanized or even perceive dehumanization as much. The asymmetry irks me.
  I'll repeat that I don't use the terminology anymore for the sake of politeness but my thoughts remain nuanced on the matter. Where some see dehumanization, I see on the opposite end a coping mechanism in the form of a base level of romanticization. Implying we humans are free of our animal instincts or that we ought to be ashamed of the best aspects (IMO) of our animal nature.
  Men who use the term "female" as a means to purposefully dehumanize are of course not only assholes but also annoying to me in the same way just inverted: I dislike debasing things that are neutral/positive for the sense of elitism or superiority. Or making something innocent and ordinary out to be crude and gross. I've never really related that well to men telling sex jokes for instance (and I've had some male friends who did that constantly and it annoyed me but I mostly just rolled my eyes at it).
  I don't like crudeness at the same level as romanticization because that crude attitude also implies a sacredness that they're purposefully defiling. I don't like the implication of existing sacredness OR the desire to get under people's skin about it since that just contributes to the sense of taboo around sexuality and gender.
  
  I'm not at my keyboard so my reply will be more brief than I'd like. Unfortunately, connotations will always have a significant amount of contextual nuance, and human communication is absolutely full of it. I appreciate that you make an effort to not upset people, and understand how certain terms have been ruined by those mis-using phrases. It is absolutely frustrating when something should be neutral. But language itself conveys semantics and tone, it will be impossible to have everyone take even the most innocuous sentences as neutral, because unless you're lecturing facts, people will try to attach a purpose to your words.
  
  Just replying to show a genuine interest in a more fleshed out response from you when you are at a keyboard again, if you aren't up for writing more on it though, no worries.

102 comments